In November, before a Senate executive appointments committee hearing got underway at the Statehouse, Ryan Croke was in the audience area carrying on a conversation with Janice Smith-Warshaw.

This was obvious to observers, as they were talking in sign language — something Croke, the 30-year-old who took over as chief of staff for Gov. Pat Quinn in September — has used since childhood.

Smith-Warshaw was approved by the committee and later the full Senate as superintendent of the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville.

At a recent interview in his Statehouse office, Croke noted that his parents were both deaf from birth.

“American Sign Language was my first language,” said Croke, who was brought up in Wheeling. “And I find my ability to sign (is) something that comes in handy all the time.”

Croke describes his job as “24/7.”

“I spend a lot of time in the office, and I find myself responding to telephone calls and emails at all hours of the day and night,” he said. “I've had that expectation for as long as I've worked for Governor Quinn. He is a demanding, hard-working, aggressive executive. … It's a demanding, nonstop job. But we have a demanding, nonstop governor.”

Croke, who is paid $130,000 a year, took over for Jack Lavin, who had worked for Quinn in the state treasurer's office and ran the state's commerce agency under Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Lavin — Quinn's third chief of staff after Jerry Stermer (now Quinn's budget director) and Michelle Saddler (now secretary of the Department of Human Services) — had been paid $170,000 annually when he left the Quinn administration in the fall to go to the private sector.

‘Vigorous discussions'

Croke said he got interested in government though classwork at Wheeling High School, where he also was on the debate team. He said his family was nonpolitical, but he “was always interested in public issues,” and carried that interest to the University of Illinois. He studied communications and political science and got a master's in communications, all at the Urbana-Champaign campus.

It was while he was in graduate school — where his thesis was on access to telecommunications for people with hearing impairments — that he learned from a fellow researcher of a job posting from then-Lt. Gov. Quinn's office.

“So on a whim I applied for that job,” Croke said. “I did not know anybody in the office. I did not know Pat Quinn at the time.”

“I got a call for an interview. I came in,” Croke said. “I got to meet with the lieutenant governor.”

And he went to work.

Page 2 of 3 - “I got immediate exposure to a number of his priorities,” Croke said of Quinn, including economic development in rural areas.

“I staffed the broadband deployment council. I worked on veterans' issues. I worked on, you name it, the Illinois River coordinating council.”

When Quinn inherited the governor's office following impeachment and ouster of Blagojevich, Croke also went to the governor's office. Before getting his current job, he was deputy chief of staff, overseeing state agencies including State Police, Corrections, the Emergency Management Agency, Historic Preservation, Natural Resources, and Agriculture.

Croke said that he is able to express his own ideas to the governor.

“He listens to a lot of people, including me,” Croke said, “and we have vigorous discussions about a whole range of issues, and ultimately, he decides. And I think many of us here are fortunate that he shares our fundamental values and priorities and we work with him to carry out those priorities.”

“When I disagree, I say so,” he added. “He encourages us to offer dissent.”

There are also many meetings, he said, generally including what can be hourslong gatherings with the governor at the Executive Mansion each night of the legislative session.

“There's not a day that goes by that he's not calling to talk through public policy issues and happenings around Illinois, to see, well what can we do better; what do we need to do on priorities A, B and C; how are we getting the budget passed,” Croke said. “It's a nonstop gauntlet.”

The right qualities

While Croke took some time off to help with the Quinn campaign during the 2010 election, he is now “focused on this demanding role” and is solely on the government side of things.

And he clearly disagrees with some criticisms of his boss. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner, for example, calls Quinn the “worst governor in America.”

“It flies in the face of reality,” Croke said. “Governor Quinn has taken head-on, with a lot of courage, some problems that many skeptics thought we would never overcome. … Do we have more work to do? Yes, we do. … But I think he's proven over and over again his willingness to take on huge, huge challenges with courage.”

“He's a hard worker,” Quinn said when asked about Croke during a recent visit to The State Journal-Register. “He knows how to work with people and get the best out of them and the most out of them.”

State Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, who was chief of staff to Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, before being elected to the Senate in 2012, said he thinks Croke is doing “a fantastic job.”

Page 3 of 3 - “I think you have to earn the trust of individuals you work with,” Manar said. “That means the employees that you interact with, and in his case it would mean legislators. … I believe he's earned it. … I find myself on several occasions being pleasantly surprised with his ability and with the job that he's doing.”

Senate GOP Leader Christine Radogno of Lemont also had good things to say about the governor's chief of staff.

“Ryan Croke came into the job with the right positive attitude,” Radogno said. “He opened his door to legislators and policymakers in the state capital. He's hard working, knowledgeable and personable. That's a good combination for working with the General Assembly.”

No political plans

Croke met his wife, Brook, when both were resident advisers in the same dormitory at the U of I. A Collinsville native, she was a biochemistry major and got her master's in genetic counseling from Northwestern University and works as a genetic counselor at Children's Hospital of Illinois in Peoria. They first rented and then purchased their Springfield home, and are expecting their first child in mid-May.

Croke's mother, Joann, died at age 62 in 2008. His father, John, 67, retired as an engineer with AT&T. Croke described both as “totally independent, smart, hard-working people.”

His mother was a homemaker and his father was a graduate of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y.

“I helped my parents … just like any kid helps their parents,” Croke said. “I was from time to time the person who made the telephone calls to help run interference. It's a lot like being the son or daughter of somebody whose first language is not English.”

When he heads north for the job, Croke said, he sometimes stays with his father in the Wheeling house he was brought up in, and sometimes he stays with his brother, Pete, a computer programmer who lives in Chicago.

“I think my parents' deafness has informed my outlook on life and priorities and opportunity for people,” Croke said.

And, he said, he has no plans at this time to seek elective office.

“I'm too busy to think about anything beyond the work that we have in front of us,” Croke said.